


Our Endless Numbered Days

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, By Dumb Self-Sacrificing Numbskulls, Codependency, Happy Ending, M/M, Oblivious Bucky Barnes, Oblivious Steve Rogers, Super Soldier Serum, Super-Morons in Love, Unnecessary Angsting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-05 01:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4159875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They promised each other <i>to the end of the line</i>. But when they made that promise, they couldn't have known it. They couldn't have dreamt that their line might be infinite. They could never have imagined a world where that end might never come.</p><p>It's an obligation they never could have foreseen, Bucky knows that.</p><p>Bucky knows that it's wrong to hold anyone to that kind of vow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Love to my dearest [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad) for the beta. Title credit to [Iron & Wine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Endless_Numbered_Days).
> 
> Part two will be up soon :)

His mouth’s been dry with this, his chest’s been tight with this, his heart’s been heavy and his eyes have stung with this for _weeks_.

For the longest time, he’d been able to shrug it away, been able to sweep it under the rugs, behind the doors in his mind that get easier to close with every passing day, month, year: he’d been able to compartmentalize. He’d been able to focus on the feeling of Steve in his arms and the taste of Steve on his lips and the warmth of Steve in his world, in their bed, around his soul: he’d be able to pretend it was irrelevant.

For the longest fucking _time_.

But the numbers on the calendar keep changing. The faces of their friends are changing. Hairs are greying, skin is wrinkling, knees are getting weak.

Just not theirs.

The mirror doesn’t lie.

It’s been ten years since Washington. He’d be talking out his ass if he said nothing was different, that they look _exactly_ the same: they’ve both got shadows behind their eyes that shift. They’ve both got joys that spark and shine. 

But their bodies haven’t worn like the selves of them have. Bucky’s spent hours searching for a lighter strand of hair that wasn’t there before the table, before the serum. Bucky’s tried his damnedest to imagine a new crease in the flesh around his eyes, proof of worry or laughter or _anything_.

No dice. 

And his mouth’s been dry with this; his chest’s been tight.

He can’t shrug it off anymore.

“So, um,” and there’s a little voice in the back of Bucky’s head—sounds like his ma, sounds like Steve with his voice cracking at thirteen, sounds like Sam when he’d been getting his foot again in the beginning, in those first days: _time and place, Barnes, time and place_ ; and maybe Bucky should listen. Maybe.

Except he can’t. He can’t listen because there’s no good time or place for this. To say this. To make this known and to get it off his chest and to risk what comes of this one agony, this singular dagger in his heart because he’s not stupid. Once he says the words, they can’t be taken back. Once he sheds light, Steve will notice. Steve will think on it harder, maybe, than he has before. Steve will remember what Bucky is, what he’s done, who he’s always been and how he was always less than Steve deserved. 

Steve will notice. Steve will stop pretending _not_ to notice.

And once Bucky _says_ it, Steve won’t feel obligated anymore. Steve won’t feel like he has to stay beyond his wants. Won’t feel chained down for an eternity that neither of them had signed up for. Not really.

There’s no good time and place for this. Over cereal at the kitchen table’ll have to do.

“Look,” Bucky sighs out, shoulders heaving with the breath. It takes everything in him to keep his hand steady as he sets his spoon back into the bowl and moves to fold his hands, to force himself not to shake, not to back out.

“Stevie, I—”

“You alright, Buck?” Steve’s face is contorted with the concern that Bucky’s seen too much of in his life—he swore, once he got his mind right again, that he’d keep that look from Steve’s face, keep that stress from Steve’s body at all costs.

He’s always failing, somehow. 

“Fine, yeah,” Bucky brushes off the worry, waves his hand and inadvertently avoids the arm Steve reaches across the table to rest on Bucky’s knuckles; he notices too late, with the widening of Steve’s eyes, the way he bites at his lower lip: rejected, somehow, and Bucky hadn’t even noticed, hadn’t even meant, hadn’t even _seen_ —

Fuck.

“I just,” he falters, but reminds himself that it’s for the best, that he can’t keep running from this thing in the back of his mind, not now that it’s at the front of his mind and he can’t escape its bitterness even in the sweetness of moments, can’t pretend he doesn’t feel it at the back of every breath. 

“I been thinkin’, y’know? And,” he shakes his head against the flood of memories—once those pictures, those things he’d known and felt; once the pathways in his brain had started to heal, the serum made them crystal clear in ways that had Bucky in bed for days with the way his head seared, with the way his stomach churned: he’s blessed and cursed it, in the years since.

He curses it, now.

“We made promises, you and I,” Bucky speaks to the fold of his fingers together on the tabletop; yes. They’d made promises: in the grass, in the pews, on their fire escape, in the alleyways, at the docks, in their room. In their bed.

Crystal fucking clear. 

“We made our own vows, didn’t we?” Bucky has to force his voice not to catch, not to tear out too rough. “Way back when?”

“Yeah, we did, Buck,” Steve’s smile is tight; he’s confused. “We did.”

“To the end of the line.” There’s no amount of force that Bucky can show or give that can keep his voice from catching; not on that.

His mouth is dry; his chest is tight.

“I meant ‘em, y’know,” Steve murmurs, jolting Bucky from the miasma, the dark fucking tide of where his mind goes. “Bucky, I _meant_ that.”

“I know,” Bucky whispers back. “Me too.”

More than anything. More than fucking _anything_.

“But,” Bucky starts, and he wonders if maybe he was wrong, maybe this won’t stop the dryness in his throat, the pressure in his chest. “But I, we, Stevie,” and it’s everything he can do not to look up and plead with his eyes in that way that Steve _knows_ , in that way that Steve’ll come and rescue him from every time, every goddamn time.

No. No, he’s gotta get this out.

“We never could have imagined this,” he finally forms the words. “We never could have even dreamed we’d end up like this. Here. Now.”

And when the memories started streaming back, all technicolor and unforgiving, he can’t bite back the laughs-turned-sobs that wrack him hard when he thinks of that last night in New York: _the Future_.

Jesus, but the _irony_.

“How many years, Steve?” Bucky asked, and maybe it’s a question of how many between them, how many before, how many frozen, suffering, how many years did they die a little inside, did they yearn before now, before this—he’s not sure what he means.

It doesn’t matter. The fact remains.

“We haven’t aged. Not a fuckin’ day.”

Steve lifts old eyes in that young face. Bright and clear as ever; first cracks of heartbreak in the blue—and that kills Bucky, that kills him.

But he owes this to Steve. He owes everything to Steve.

He gave his heart to Steve a century ago. Everything else is fucking filler.

“Bucky—”

And Bucky can’t stand the strain in that voice, the conflict that tries to pull it apart and leave the frays to collect the blood and feeling that spills out from the wreckage: Bucky can’t fucking stand it, because he’s the cause of it on all sides, that’s the whole point, that’s why he’s gotta lay it out, full and honest, cards on the table between them and maybe it’s all hearts to fold and spades to call but Buck can’t stand the thought of Steve hurting, of Steve settling, of Steve rotting when all Steve’s ever been meant for was _more_.

So he breathes in, and he steadies for what _he’s_ meant for: the hurting, the settling.

Bucky digs in and readies his own soul to rot.

“What if the end of the line’s decades off, still?” he asks, and that’s the thing, the unknown spectre that haunts them both. “Fuck, or centuries?” He leans in a little, and doesn’t fight the desire to cover Steve’s hands between them, to meet his eyes as his voice gets low: “ _More_?”

Steve’s eyes are cast down, so Bucky can’t read them. He can, however, read the red that grows at the center of Steve’s lower lip, where he’s worrying that pout to swelling, to tearing, and Bucky knows how that feels.

Bucky knows.

“What if there’s no,” he starts, and averts his own eyes when Steve doesn’t look up. “I mean, I know it sounds crazy, I know, and maybe it’s stupid, it’s probably just stupid but we’ve been living crazy almost as long as you been livin’ stupid,” his eyes flicker up to see if Steve responds to that, and his heart jumps to see the quirk of his lips, only just, but real, and this is going to kill Bucky.

It is going to absolutely _kill_ him to let Steve go.

“But, just, what if,” and _what if_ is what stalks him in the night, _what if_ makes his blood race and his skin crawl and makes him feel wrong under Steve’s hands in the dark because what if it was only ever convenient, a promise of necessity; what if they’d both recognized and never said that the end of the line would be just a handful of years if they were lucky, with the way Steve lived, with the way Steve fought on all fronts; what if Steve was fucking _Steve_ , righteous as ever, and held to that oath that Bucky’d never asked to be returned but never cast aside when it was—couldn’t, for the way it burrowed in around his weary heart; and fuck, _fuck_ , but _what if_ Steve held this like a talisman, an obligation, a debt to be paid? What if that was braided into the way Steve took him in, and nursed him back, and held him close and whispered love? And fuck, but—

“What if there’s no end to this thing?” Bucky whispers. “What if we’re, what if we—”

Bucky clears his throat to cover the way his voice catches; the way his heart wants to spill through the cracks. Because the truth is, whether they had seven years then, or seventy now, or seven fucking hundred in this serum-hazed future, Bucky’s always known that Steve deserved better. He was never inclined to push, before: too selfish.

But Bucky’ll be damned, fucking _damned_ , if he’s kept Steve tethered this long, weighed by duty and a vow made young and punch-drunk and so fucking naive: he’ll be damned if he holds Steve back any longer from what he’s goddamned earned.

“When we made those promises,” Bucky collects himself, says his piece as straight and steady as he can; “we never could have seen, never could have understood,” he gestures aimlessly between them, around them: “this.”

Bucky’s eyes flick to Steve, just then, and it settles rough in his gut to see that gaze so fixed, so blank, because Bucky knows Steve again—learned him like a heartbeat and the truth of the stars in the sky as close as he’d ever known him before, and to be unable to read him, to be unable to see: it’s glass in his chest, it draws blood.

_You gotta do this_ , he tells himself. _He won’t go without permission, he won’t save himself unless he knows it’s okay._

“And so,” Bucky breathes out, folds his hands on the table and fixes his stare on the soggy flakes in his cereal bowl: pathetic. There’s a twinge beneath his ribs; he empathizes. “We shouldn’t be held to it, the things we said, the things we meant, even with all our hearts, maybe, then. Before we could ever fathom where we’d be. _That_ we’d be, at _all_.”

Steve doesn’t say a thing. Not a goddamned thing. Bucky’s chest tightens. Steve’s breath is slow: inhale, exhale. Barely a sound. 

“We shouldn’t feel like we have to,” Bucky falters, but regroups quick: “like we have to be bound by that. We shouldn’t feel like we have to honor those things if,” he swallows hard; doesn’t do him any fucking good. “If the rules have changed, there’s no guilt or shame in it, in, in…” 

He tries, stumbles, and he knows he’s gonna trip, knows he can’t pick himself back up and make it smooth, make it sure, because his heart is goddamned breaking for all that it knows this is right, this is what has to be done, Steve _deserves_ to have whatever he wants without any caveats, without any loose fucking ends snagging him along the way, and in this century there’s a new sky that’s their limit, and even that means so little to people like them, and Jesus, but Steve deserves heaven and earth on a platter and Bucky will not stand in the way of that. He won’t.

Not any longer.

“No,” Steve cuts in, expression placid almost. Lost in thought. “No, you’re,” Steve licks his lips, and it takes all that Bucky has in him not to lean in and kiss him senseless, take the heart on his sleeve where it’s dying, just a little, and offer up into Steve’s open mouth, it takes _everything_ —

“You’re right.”

Bucky’s straightens, fingers clenched at the edge of the table, making dents, and his heart keeps at the hurting, then; keeps at the breaking. Keeps at the rotting inside, straight through to the out.

“You’re right,” Steve says it again, and it doesn’t get any better, any easier with repetition; of course it doesn’t. “God, we never,” he shakes his head, and his lips twist into something vile, something sad, humor soured into hate. 

“We never could have dreamt this shit,” Steve exhales, and it almost sounds like it’s a relief for him to say it; and that’s what Bucky’s always wanted. That’s most important: that Steve breathes easy, breathes free. “It’s impossible, we,” his eyes glance up, sear upon contact, blue to shade of blue. 

“ _We’re_ impossible. The life we live,” his voice drops; “the way we are.”

Bucky can’t make the sob in his throat form into a word, and so he nods. He nods, because that’s true.

“Shoulda died before I hit twenty,” Steve muses, just this side of bitter; “definitely before I hit thirty.”

“Don’t,” Bucky can say that, because the sob’s already formed that way, to make that plea; and Steve speaks truths now, too, but Bucky can’t stand to hear them.

“You know it,” Steve pushes, and Bucky can’t figure why; wonders if Steve knows how much it cuts.

“I shoulda died on that table,” he snaps back. “On a cliffside. In that ravine.”

Steve looks gut-punched, lips parted, eyes-wide: he didn’t know how much it cut. 

He knows now.

“We were just kids,” Bucky sums up, the hoarse rasp of it demanding blood money from the sides of his throat.

“Less than, hell,” Steve agrees, marvels in a way that damns the thing that’s witnessed: damns them both; “compared to now.”

And fuck, but they were kids. Brothers; tiny souls that made a promise and Bucky thinks they both meant it. Bucky believes they both mean it, even now.

But the world’s nothing like they’d dreamed of. Life isn’t so simple.

Sometimes promises have to fade, if you can’t bear just to break them. Sometimes the world opens up in ways you’d never imagined, and what you had isn’t a goddamned thing compared to what awaits.

Bucky always wanted Steve to have the world. And Bucky—

Bucky is not the world. 

“So,” Bucky makes himself say it. “That’s, we,” he clears his voice, and shakes off the outer vestiges of the pain it causes to give the one point of purpose in his world the permission to move on. “We’re good?”

“Yeah, of course.” Steve gives that smile of his that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Of course we’re good.”

Bucky mirrors the smile right back, and forces himself to eat the milk-soaked Raisin Bran; unsavory—well deserved, maybe, for waiting so long. For clinging too tight. For being so selfish; for wanting. _Needing_.

Some kind of penance.


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve spends hours at the heavy bag, as if each hit it takes will give him an answer.
> 
> The bag only gives him torn knuckles; the bag only breaks beneath the weight of something bigger than itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter needed splitting; so...three parts, now? And the last one will be posted probably tomorrow <3

Steve spends hours at the heavy bag, as if each hit it takes will give him an answer.

_What did I miss?_

_What did I do?_

_What did I fail to do?_

_How could I have lost him?_

_How did I not see it?_

_How could I have fucked up this goddamned bad?_

_What am I going to do, what the fuck am I going to do—_

The bag only gives him torn knuckles; the bag only breaks beneath the weight of something bigger than itself.

He’s breathless, chest heaving with the force of a storm as his lungs burn heavy from the inside out: he’s as helpless as he'd ever been—in another century, another life—and yet it’s worse, he’s less, because even when he’d been stripped of everything from the will in his heart to the breath in his lungs, he’d had Bucky, _Jesus_ , but he’d had _Bucky—_

He shakes as he sinks to the floor, elbows on his knees, cheeks streaking against the last of the blood on the broke-open skin of his hands as it takes its time in healing: knows, maybe, that he needs to feel something ache that he can see, when all he breathes is _hurt_.

Steve’d said for ages that they were good. When people asked. When he passed himself in the mirror and wondered. When they’d woken with nightmares more nights than they slept: they were splintered, fractured, and the cracks could never be unmade but they were good. They were good because they had each other.

Steve hadn’t had to say it in years; not to anyone. Not to his own reflection. He doesn’t think his heart’s ever felt so light for being so full as the day he realized: this is them. this is _always_.

And of course it’d crossed his mind. The way Tony took longer to heal when shit came up that he couldn’t sit out. The way Sam grew just that little bit slower, step by step around the Mall on a run. The fine lines at Natasha’s eyes: more gradual than any difference in the rest of the team, but still—there.

Of _course_ he’d fucking seen it. Of course he’d spent days willing grey into his hair, or stiffness to his joints.

And he’d set foot in a church again, dropped to his knees in the pew and fucking thanked whoever listened that if he had to face the world longer than his right, he’d have the only thing, the _only thing_ that could ever make such a curse into a blessing.

He’d knelt there, and he’d spoken _gratitude_. 

He’d gone home and crawled into bed and inhaled _love_ in the soft mess of hair on the pillow beside him, and fuck; _fuck_.

How long, then? How long has he been missing it? How long has he been basking in delusion, been soaking up the improbable, indefensible miracle of everything he’d ever dreamed while Bucky languished? How long has he been holding Bucky— _Bucky_ , who’d lived in torment while Steve slept in the cold, who didn’t deserve anything but love, and life, and every want and need and bright thing in the world—how long has he kept Bucky as an unwilling hostage to a promise Steve held closer than the blood in his tripping heart?

God _damnit_.

He reaches rotely for his phone to check the time, on impulse; knows the gym won’t be his for much longer and doesn’t think he could fake his way through even the briefest of encounters with another person: he reaches for his phone, on impulse.

He shouldn’t have.

The lock screen changes regularly, but the subjects are always the same: himself and Bucky. The shot that graces the screen at present was stolen just a week ago: Steve had been scrolling through headlines, and Bucky’d been resting his head on Steve’s shoulder, and it was only courtesy of the sun streaming in at just the right time, in just the right place so as to illuminate Bucky’s reflection on the glass of the screen—and where Steve had figured Bucky was dozing, maybe, or else reading over his shoulder, no.

No, Bucky was just looking at Steve, all idle comfort and soft grins, and Steve couldn’t help his own smile in turn. Couldn’t stop from flipping open the camera app and documenting the moment, taking the way his heart hums happily at the sight and making it tangible beyond his own mind, his own memories: solid. Real.

Forever. 

Damn it all, but he shouldn’t have fucking _looked_. 

Because Bucky’s face is open in the way Steve holds dearest, cherishes most: has from the day they met, when Bucky’d stared slack-jawed and breathing fast after he’d scared away the boys picking on Steve, when Bucky’d talked a mile-a-minute as he helped Steve back home, when Steve’d leaned against Bucky to steady his steps reluctantly at first, hateful to need the help until the warmth sank in and made him feel safe—Bucky’s face, in the now, is unguarded. Is bright with everything he hides more often than not, when he’s on alert, when the world around him might hold some hate, might pose some threat.

Steve clutches that fact to his chest like an angel in disguise: that he can breathe with Bucky close and help him forget that worry. Help him shed that armor. That Bucky knows he’s safe with Steve, because Steve will die before he sees harm done to Bucky ever again.

Not ever _again_.

But it's Bucky's face in the image that cuts him deep: not just trusting, not just open, but honest, but marveling. He’s looking at Steve like the world’s contained in Steve’s body, in Steve’s being, and it had taken a long time, a _long_ fucking _time_ for Steve to realize that Bucky had always looked at him like that, that Bucky’s always watched him with a hint of wary—because _you’ve got all the stupid in you, Stevie, and God knows what bull you’ll try and pull off next_ —but it was all feeling, really, and if Steve had all the stupid, it was also because, in Bucky’s mind—impossibly—he somehow held all of everything else. 

He needs to shut off his goddamned phone. 

But from there, it’s Bucky's mouth and its curl that does him in—and Steve remembers the first time he’d ever tasted it, remembers feeling like the world was new and right and full of possibility where all he’d ever known was limitation, was the press of borrowed time ticking against his lungs. He remembers even more clearly, though, the way that his blood would turn warm, the tingling in his veins and the hiccup in his pulse at the smile beneath the smile, the way Bucky’s body would go soft, would lean into the meagre offering of Steve’s tiny frame like it was a lifeline, and Steve would see the shining curve of joy that no one else had earned, had been blessed to know on that mouth, those lips: and Steve remembers it most clearly because it hadn’t been so long ago that he’d sobbed in Bucky’s strong arms to see that smile again, as effortless and gleaming as it ever was, somehow after everything, and gifted only to Steve in all the world, and Bucky could have anything, or anyone, and he deserved the best of everything and Steve had let him go, Steve had let him fall and Steve had left him to die again and again in the cold yet here he is, here they were and Bucky was _smiling_ — 

And then, _then_ : it's Bucky's eyes, in the picture. It’s Bucky’s eyes upon him that does it, that damn well stops his heart.

Because those eyes can’t be captured in two dimensions, not truly: Steve’s tried more times than he can count, and modern technology should be able to grasp it closer, somehow, except that it can’t. It can’t, because those eyes are every cliché and yet every unknown shred of perfect still, even as they swim and swirl and change: they’re the soul of a man with more depths than Steve can fathom, and somehow, somehow Steve was always lucky enough to see it, to be allowed to witness the churning flow of a heart and a mind and a devotion that Steve never thought could be returned, and offered up to _him_ of all people, and Bucky’s eyes might not be _right_ in the picture, they might not do the overwhelming reality of it justice, but it’s close enough to strike Steve hard: all that life. All that soul. All that, that _love_ —

That face. That mouth. Those eyes.

He, it, _they_ —

Steve can barely stand it, the swell of loss, the way his chest wants to tear itself apart, he can’t think, he can’t see, he can’t stop looking at that much _love_ —

Wait.

_Wait_.

There’s a kick in the beating of his heart, a shock to his system that he couldn’t ignore even if he tried. And maybe it’s wishful thinking, maybe it’s how they say the brain keeps thinking just a second before you die but Steve’s never known it, never felt it like that—maybe it’s desperation, and denial, and he shouldn’t even bother, but Steve can’t take his eyes off of Bucky in that picture. He can’t.

And Steve knows that face, that body: Steve has touched that skin at every stretch, Steve has run hands and mouth and tongue across every curve and angle. Steve has kissed and nipped and sucked those lips and he knows them like a fingerprint, like the cadence of a pulse, hell: he _knows_ the cadence of _that_ pulse, the life of James Buchanan Barnes in every fathomable instance, in every throe of emotion and feeling and fearing and want the human heart could hold: Steve _knows_ it.

And Steve can doubt and fear and hurt all he wants, but his artist’s gaze knows truths, seeks the devil in the details to commit to graphite immortal, every time: Steve can question and fret and wallow as much as he’d like, but his eyes pick out the lies and peel them back to find the real, to paint it straight for all the body tells itself slant.

And the face in the image. Looking at _Steve_.

There’s no artifice, there. No falsehood to the wonder. Nothing more than honesty, than the soul, bright and true in the way those eyes speak love.

If anything: it is the purest truth Steve thinks he’s ever seen.

And Steve’s on his feet before he can think, before he can breathe, because the only other truth that pure, that fierce that he knows is his own love, is his own heart soaring for one man in the whole of creation; it’s the only thing. The only truth that compares.

But close-second, the truth is this: Steve Rogers doesn’t back down from a fight.

Not with the stakes this high.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr.](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com)


	3. Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And they’re so much alike. And Bucky _loves_ him: not just as a friend, or as a brother, but as Steve loves Bucky, the better, brighter half of his own goddamned soul. 
> 
> And maybe, just maybe, Bucky’s mind had traveled those same roads, had gone that same place. Had wanted _better_ , not for himself. 
> 
> Never for himself. Bucky’s never wanted better for _himself_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad) for her unending support and amazing beta skills, and to each of you, as ever: I hope this is an end you can get on board with :)

“No.”

Steve’s breathless with something bigger, something much more earth-shattering and heart-breaking than exertion when he tears into their apartment, mindless of everything save the need to see, to ask, to push, to know. Because they’re so much alike, he and Bucky, they’re so much alike and the love in that face was real, Steve _believes_ that.

And Steve had broken to hear the words from Bucky's mouth that morning; Steve had gone immediately to what he did wrong, to what he failed to see, to what he failed to give to Bucky who deserved all things, deserved the best, deserved _better_ —

And they’re so much alike. And Bucky _loves_ him: not just as a friend, or as a brother, but as Steve loves Bucky, the better, brighter half of his own goddamned soul. 

And maybe, just maybe, Bucky’s mind had traveled those same roads, had gone that same place. Had wanted _better_ , not for himself. 

Never for himself. Bucky’s never wanted better for _himself_.

And Steve can see it, if he looks close enough: he can see it in Bucky's face—too surprised to see him, too red around the eyes. He can read it in the pages unturned in the book in Bucky's hands—same page he’d been on before bed last night—and he can hear it in the heavy staccato of Bucky’s heart racing loud enough for Steve to hear it from where he stands. Steve can see it, and Steve can feel the same tightness in Bucky’s countenance seeping slow from his own frame because maybe this isn’t dying, or ending, or losing. And maybe the truth between them is that lines don’t end. Lines are _infinite_.

 _To the end of the line_ was never an oath that they were meant to outlive. Not _ever_.

“No,” Steve breathes out, firm and real and wanting more than anything to fix this, to find the hitch in their course and rewrite it; to reach out and hold Bucky close again and never, ever let go. 

“We shouldn’t feel like we have to keep any vows, any promises we made,” Steve nods, and Bucky pales, and the heart Steve can hear even _sounds_ sick with it, somehow, but Steve pushes on; there is no other choice. “We never should have felt like we _had_ to.”

And Bucky looks away, Bucky’s breathing’s too damned shallow, and Steve’s kneeling in front of him before he can think to move; Steve’s reaching to touch—one hand at his chest to steady, one palm at his face to hold.

“But what if I _want_ to?” Steve rasps out, and the widening of Bucky’s eyes let forth a flood, tears that aren’t wetness but are wanting, a stream of feeling and soul-ache and disbelief, a wanting that won’t be indulged, that can’t trust and doesn’t see and Steve can’t have that, won’t stand that.

This is the only fight that Steve cannot bear to lose.

“What if,” Steve swallows hard, and only keeps from breaking down by stroking a thumb down Bucky’s jawline: steady, steady—sure. 

“What if that’s the one thing I want, more than anything else in the world?” Steve breathes; doesn’t dare to blink. “The one thing I always fucking wanted. What if I just want you, then to now and for however much longer we get,” and Bucky’s eyes are bright, are too damned wide, like he’s convinced himself the thing before him can’t be true, so he has to take in more, to find the center, to find a foothold. Steve aches with what he reads in Bucky eyes, and he draws circles around the pulse beneath his thumb to try and ground them both in this, in what they have, in what they are.

In this truth that is Steve's _everything_.

“What if I love you with everything I have and more, what if every cell in my body sings when you’re near me, what if,” Steve's voice breaks, grows rougher still; “what if forever sounds like the best thing, the only thing I—”

Bucky’s breath hitches, audible between them and tangled in the pump of blood under Steve’s touch and they’re electric together, frayed wires and raw nerves, and Steve wants nothing more than to hold Bucky close enough that one thundering heart could damn well touch the other but not yet; not _yet_.

He’s got to say it. Bucky has to _know_.

“What if I don’t _want_ an end to this thing?” Steve begs him to see it, to know that truth in the core of his heart, in the weight of his bones. “What if the end of the line always terrified me because I was afraid it’d come too soon, and take you from me one way or another, and,” Steve’s throat gets tight based wholly on terror, based wholly on the promise of hope:

“And what if the idea of it never coming makes my chest feel light, huh?”

Steve is close enough, suddenly, to feel the heat of Bucky’s exhale: Steve is close enough to taste the man he loves upon the air.

“Am I,” Steve whispers, barely a breath, but the _only breath in the world_. “Am I allowed to fight for you?” 

And Bucky blinks, then, and the feeling turns to flesh as tears escape both eyes, as Bucky’s chest heaves up, harsh and ragged, as his lips part as he breathes out:

“Stevie,” and it’s all wonder, it’s all lost inside what might be a dream except it isn’t, they aren’t, they’re real and they’re here after everything, through everything and they’re in love, goddamnit.

They’re in _love_.

“Oh god,” Bucky moans, and he reaches, and he doesn’t have to touch to convince Steve to move, to convince Steve to melt right into him and follow his momentum as he pulls Steve onto the couch, on his body, as he murmurs straight into the line of Steve’s neck with more feeling than Steve thinks he can stand: “ _Stevie_.”

And Bucky’s arching into him, a starved man, all broken edges seeking their mates in the heat after the cold; and whatever resolve, whatever sheer amount of misguided conviction had driven him over breakfast shatters then and there as Bucky surges up against Steve’s chest, pressed full against Steve's mouth and kisses deep, long and arching, tongue seeking all that Steve is and relishing long and lavish, worshipping at an altar that Steve is, but that Bucky believes in, somehow, more than heaven and earth. 

“Yes,” Bucky chokes out, shaking even as he kisses Steve breathless: “yes. Yes.”

“Yes to what?”

Bucky meets his eyes for an instant that sears straight to Steve’s soul before burying his face at Steve’s throat.

“Everything,” Bucky murmurs, and Steve feels the syllables slot into the give of his pulse against skin, against lips as they move. “You. _You_ , and _everything_.” Bucky shudders, and Steve hears the sob that’s caught in the sound as he gasps: “Everything _with_ you.”

And maybe it had taken everything he had, and maybe that’s both heartbreaking and soul-saving, in the end: maybe the idea of letting Steve go had ruined him so thoroughly that Bucky is boneless, Bucky is aimless and seeking against Steve’s frame as his mouth moves, sloppy kisses fueled more by desperation than by intent, and Steve’s gentle, tender as he turns them over, as he guides Bucky to settle into the grooves of him, to splay across his chest like an anchor and a prayer and the heartbeat that keeps Steve alive, because he is.

He _is_.

“I didn’t,” Bucky’s voice breaks, and Steve just wants to hold it close enough, hold _him_ close enough, to will the piece of them both back together. “I didn’t want to keep you,” Bucky’s mouth catches his skin between the words, between the gasps of feeling and confession that leap from his lips: “Keep you from living this new life in this new world, from finding everything you’d ever deserved and never got to know.”

And that’s it, that’s the reason, that’s the suspicion proved true here and now, that’s the love in those eyes and the truth Steve couldn’t stand to call a lie because it wasn’t, not ever: and Bucky’d always called him out for his self-righteousness, for his need to see justice done, but if either of them gave too much, thought too little of self in protecting another it was Bucky, it was always Bucky and goddamnit _all_ , but Bucky deserved more than that. Bucky deserved more than _anyone_.

“Coulda never expected to end up here, not ever Stevie, not in any way, but together? That wasn’t, you didn’t,” Bucky’s still flooding with too much emotion to contain, and each word is simultaneously blade and balm: cuts deeper, and soothes stronger for all that it’s a lie, for all that Bucky fears things that couldn’t ever _be_ , and that makes this mendable. That makes them _whole_ in the end. 

“You were here and you were making your way, you were trying and then I,” Bucky shakes his head, and more tears slip free: “what if—”

“Stop.”

Steve hadn’t been lying when he said the idea of forever made his chest light; in this moment, Bucky warm against every inch of Steve and the truth burning through that heat like nothing else in the world: Steve feels lightness where it lives, where it grows.

It’s coming back. They’re beating back together and they’re meeting in the middle and all the heartbreak between them in hours turned to eternities is fading with every breath they share in time, and it’s over now, this is over: and _they_ will never be _over_.

“Just,” Steve slips a hand between their chests and strokes upward, grasps at the crook of Bucky’s neck: “stop.”

Bucky lifts his head and there is it: there’s that same look—the parted lips, the softness in that face, the eyes wrenched open and spilling out that soul. 

Steve prays that his own eyes are giving just as good.

“There’s no world,” Steve speaks it: inadequate, but necessary in case the heart in his own eyes fails him: “there’s no reality, no future where I don’t love you,” Steve frames Bucky’s face in his hands. “Where I don’t need you,” and he presses their foreheads together, and allows himself the instant to marvel at the brush of their chests when they breathe in. “Where I don’t want you down to the fucking marrow in my bones.” 

Bucky’s looking at him, just then—Bucky’s looking at him like he can’t bear to believe what he’s hearing, what he’s gotta feel between them now for how fully Steve _vibrates_ with it, with how much Bucky is, with how much Bucky means.

“There is nothing you could do, or say, or be, that would change what I feel for you,” Steve says, because the look in Bucky’s eyes seems to beg for it, seems to need it more than air. “There is no way I could grow, or falter, or fail that would make you anything other than my heart, my whole heart,” Steve chokes on that very heart in his throat; “my _home_.”

“Steve,” Bucky reaches up, brings their lips together but doesn’t press, only breathes and closes around the way salt trails down from Steve’s eyes. “Steve, you’re the world. You’re my whole fucking world.” Bucky’s open mouth meets Steve’s, and it’s more intimate, more like two selves meeting than Steve knows how to say, how to stand: “I never want to let you go,”

“Then don’t,” Steve gasps it, Steve trembles with it: “Don’t.”

It’s as simple as that.

“You,” Bucky stares at him like a hallucination, like a promise that cannot be so. “You want that?” and Steve dies a little, something horrible and beautiful and venomous coiled tight around Steve’s heart dies then and there to see Bucky wonder at that simple fact, at that truth of the universe, writ in stars and soil and the genetic code of being in itself. “You’ll hold on? You won’t,” Bucky bites his lip to bleeding as he wrings out speech: “it won’t get, you—”

“Never.” Because Steve doesn’t care what Bucky means, doesn’t care what Bucky fears precisely: the answer is the same. The fear will always be unnecessary. "The end of the line will goddamn come for us before I ever let you go.” 

And the way that Bucky keens, damn well _moans_ at just those _words_ is like brushing up against what it means to be infinite, what it means to live and love at the core: and it’s real. They’re real. They’re here and they are inseparable. Steve believes that.

“I will lay down the track with my own two hands,” he tells Bucky, wills him to believe: makes new vows, maybe, to complement the old, to make them solid in this brave new world they embody. “I will grab you and hold you and leap for whatever comes after, I will—”

“I love you,” Bucky says, and it is woven with such emotion, such breathless need that Steve thinks he could die in it, here, wrapped in the words and the feeling and the arms that mean more: he thinks he could die in it.

He wants to live in it as long as he can.

“I _love_ you,” Bucky breathes again, marveling, lips quirking up and stealing the rhythm from Steve’s pulse. “I learned love because of you. I remembered love for the way you fill me with it,” and Steve whimpers, a sound beyond his control and exhaled only for the pounding of his blood, the force of all they hold between them as Bucky smiles, softer still, but blinding.

“The sun shines and the world turns because I love you,” he whispers, traces Steve’s cheekbones, the pout of his lips: “because I _love you_.”

And Steve can feel Bucky’s heartbeat now against his own, pressed close and unyielding: and it’s a promise more than anything that words can shape, he thinks, but still: the question won’t fade without asking.

“To the end of the line?” he asks, and Bucky leans in, then: kisses him soft but hard, a press and a claim, a world pledged between them as if it never faltered, as if there’d never been a doubt, and maybe there hadn’t been. Maybe they both were blind.

“And then some,” Bucky murmurs back, speaks straight into Steve’s mouth into his chest, into his soul, and Steve knows he means _and then always. And then everything_. Steve _knows_.

Because they won’t end. Not ever.

Lines are _infinite_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/post/122377090877/fic-our-endless-numbered-days-3-3-complete).

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com). If you wanna come join me in not ever getting over these assholes, and/or harass my ass for writing this in the first place/not posting part two immediately/whatnot.


End file.
